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REMINDER: Annual Business Meeting on Feb 16
The 2016 Annual Business Meeting & State of the Association will be held on February 16, 2016 at 4:00 PM EST. This is a great opportunity for APDU members to learn about accomplishments from 2015 and planned activities for 2016. Further, members will have an opportunity to interact with Board Members. Members are invited to RSVP with Brendan Buff. Follow the link for log-in information and agenda.
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Statistical Agency Budget Request Update
There have been several interesting developments in budget requests from federal statistical agencies for FY 2017. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Employment and Training Administration have proposed new or revived programs related to employment, job training, apprenticeships and data tools.
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Nominations Sought for 2016 Julius Shiskin Award
Nominations are invited for the annual Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. The Award is given in recognition of unusually original and important contributions in the development of economic statistics or in the use of statistics in interpreting the economy.
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Census Director Blog Post on 2020 Census Planning
The Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Operational Plan in October 2015 ? three years earlier than before the 2010 Census. One recommendation Census received ? and acted on ? was from the Government Accountability Office, to examine whether any decisions could be made ahead of schedule to reduce risk.
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White House Blog Post: Open Data Empowering Americans
The Office of Science and Technology Policy looks back on progress made in open-data initiatives over the past year, and goals for the coming year. Throughout the Administration, the U.S. Government has implemented policies to open its data.
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House Bill Would Repeal Open Data Requirements
The House passed a group of five bills on February 3 that includes a measure to allow public companies with annual revenues of under $250 million to opt out of filing financial information with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in machine-readable XBRL format. Opponents of changes to the filing requirement argue that by allowing companies to opt out of reporting machine-readable data to the SEC, the bill will decrease financial transparency.
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New & Updated Data Sources
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Sunlight Launches Criminal Justice Data Inventory
Sunlight is launching Hall of Justice, a robust, searchable data inventory of nearly 10,000 datasets and research documents from across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government. Hall of Justice is the culmination of 18 months of work gathering data and refining technology. According to Sunlight Research Analyst Damian Ortellado, who helped gather the data for Hall of Justice, ?The inventory is a way to showcase potential issues with criminal justice data and highlight the need for more uniform and accessible information. It helps us know what is missing versus what is available. In turn, this has a lot of potential to inform the current discussion on criminal justice.?
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WDQC Launches State Pages
The Workforce Data Quality Campaign (WDQC) launched new state pages on their website this week. WDQC?s expanded website now features information on higher education and workforce data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. These pages include summaries of each state?s data system, scorecards from WDQC?s recent Mastering the Blueprint Survey, and links to relevant resources and legislation.
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More Precise Broadband Availability Data From PolicyMap
PolicyMap recently introduced a new dataset, broadband internet access data from the National Broadband Map. It introduced many useful indicators, like availability of different technologies (DSL, cable, fiber, wireless), highest available speed, and number of competitors in the local market. They have now made a major improvement to this data that should make it significantly more useful than before: census block level data.
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European Union Creating Value Through Open Data
The European Union has adopted legislation to foster the re-use of Open (Government) Data. The expected impact of this legislation combined with the development of data portals, is to drive economic benefits and further transparency. Economic benefits are primarily derived from the re-use of Open Data. Value is there. The question is how big?
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Visualization of the Week
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Mapping Cultural Sites Threatened by Terrorists
The Antiquities Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting cultural artifacts and monuments from illicit trade by organized crime and terrorist organizations, has created the Culture Under Threat Map, a map of the cultural heritage sites threatened or damaged in the Middle East and North Africa region. The map incorporates data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), media reports, and terrorism research institutions to plot areas controlled or threatened by terrorist groups and overlays the location of UNESCO historical sites and museums. The Antiquities Coalition created the map to call attention to the danger that ISIS and other terrorist groups increasingly pose to cultural sites in the region.
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Notable Data Publications
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GOVERNMENT
NONPROFITS & FOUNDATIONS
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Did you work on a great report that you want your colleagues to know about? Just email us and we?ll include it here.
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APDU maintains a list of open calls for comment on proposed federal data collections. We periodically alert APDU members to newly added calls for comment. Over the last several weeks, calls for comment on the following proposed data collections were published in the Federal Register (with due date):
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Bureau of Justice Statistics
- 2016 Law Enforcement Administrative and Management Statistics (LEMAS) Survey (April 8, 2016)
Census Bureau
- Estimates of the Voting Age Population for 2015 (March 10, 2016)
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- FDIC Small Business Lending Survey (March 7, 2016)
General Services Administration
- Use of Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) as Primary Contractor Identification (April 11, 2016)
Office of the Secretary, HHS
- Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) (March 10, 2016)
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